Dang.Looks like makemeunreal failed to deliver.That's the third person in a row!I am way too busy with Uni work to do some mapping myself until July.

There's an opening right now, if anyone else is interested. It would be good to see someone contribute a new segment again, we just had a stroke of bad luck

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

Mister_Prophet wrote:Last week would've been better for me and I've already had a rushed session. But if I can have till Friday to start, I can manage another addition so long as I start then.

No prob! delighted to hear you can still give it another whirl, so by all means, start your new turn on Friday!

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

PS: to anyone who may contact me here in the next 24h - I won't be able to answer before Friday night, so don't worry if I seem slow to react!

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

EDIT (just copying and pasting something I've already said with regards to rebuilding the map): by the way, and I'm saying this based on previous rebuilds of the map and what UB said, I should say that if you use UED 2.0, rebuild geometry, lighting and pathing separately, because "build all" leads to some HOMs and such in some previous areas. If you use UED 2.1, then I believe "build all" functions as well as rebuilding each field separately.

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

Not to be a Debbie downer, but in my experience it is when people rebuild everything separately that leads to problems in levels later. But I shall abide.

Anyway, in preparation I have finally had time to replay the level. UB added quite a bit to this since last time I've seen it! I'm not sold on the elevator going down to the Demon's Grave (it works for now I suppose), but the map has had significant additions!

Some notes:

► Show Spoiler

Okay so my experiences

1. The Queen seems to get stuck when she ports into those corners sometimes. On my first run she actually got trapped for a good long while before dislodging herself. Otherwise, the fight is fine. I'm glad UB picked that torch up, that's exactly what I had wished to do with my first session; end with a Queen fight.

2. The Big Pupae seem a little slow and too healthy to be anything more than bullet sponges. They don't wuss or stagger as easy, which is good. But what do people think about making them quicker?

3. Dunno how I feel about the minigun having so much ammo. We don't have too many enemies as it is. It would be fine if we dump more guys into our sections. I'll see what I can do with my 2nd run.

4. The message log in UB's section, by the operating table, kinda jumps the window. Are we considering adding a larger one?

Otherwise, the end is quite good and kinda does what I've wanted to do since my section; divergent paths. For my part, we will be using the green portal.

Prophet, on what difficulty you played the map on? (and on what platform?)Not sure why the boss is getting stuck in the corners, perhaps it's due to the extensive pathnoding?

The enemies in my section, by the way, have generally modified properties: higher ROF, more aggressive, etc... The Minigun runs out really fast if you plan to use it against the enemy group after you cross the green portal. Also yeah, decrease the Pupae's health.

As for the message, it's not supposed to be important for whatever will be the map's story (at least that wasn't my intention).

Oh and yeah I think that's ok if you take the green path.I have a plan with the red path which would "wrap" the map. Assuming other people will ever join, though.

I played it on Medium and Hard, UT. It only happened twice, but it was only the first time when the Queen got lodged there (medium) for a significant portion of time. If I had to wager a guess, I think her hitbox was colliding with the geometry and her reduced aggression maybe kept her in place. But it could also be the teleportor points, maybe they need to be "in" more and not on the outskirts of the room?

As for the message box, I had no problems with the messages I just noticed the text overlapped and didn't know if you guys discussed importing the bigger (ONP) trans window for UT. I'm of the mind that maybe all the messages could be shortened to fit the default trans window. I can help with this if I have permission to mend the logs in previous sections.

Teleport points should be fine, they're placed over the middle of the iron floor borders (not over the glass floor), when I play on Unreal difficulty she always jumps out of them and starts shooting at me. Perhaps I could never notice this bug because on Unreal difficulty you have to deal with a lot of Pupae (80 of them) and the Queen becomes a secondary problem.

Her Aggressiveness is unchanged but I decreased her CombatStyle of 0.2 points so she would decide more commonly to shoot you instead of chasing you for a melee - which makes the fight fairer as it's a bad idea having waves of Pupae surrounding you and an overly aggressive Queen.

Perhaps having an Easy/Medium only Queen with regular CombatStyle would be better? Pupae aren't in those difficulties.

Mister_Prophet wrote:Not to be a Debbie downer, but in my experience it is when people rebuild everything separately that leads to problems in levels later. But I shall abide.

Honestly, you have loads more experience in this matter than I, so I would tend to trust your judgment. But after a few sections were added (at least before UB's addition) I clearly remember MY section getting screwed up with a "build all" in UED 2.0... and the problem disappeared when rebuilding everything separately. Alternatively, I would use UED 2.1 and "build all" would work just fine. I have not rebuild the map since UBerserker's addition, because frankly his upload is about as clean as it gets. I only rebuild what people upload if there's a blatant HOM or BSP issue that I notice and want to try and get rid of...

The current build has three minor visual "bugs/issues" I want to get checked before the final version is released:- makemeunreal's section has a dodgy flickering light: after a minute or two, it stops blinking, for whatever reason (admittedly, a lot of people won't notice). Two actors very close to each other are actually responsible for the blinking, so I might try and see if replacing them with a single actor somehow solves the "problem" (oh, and the hanging cables here must be "rehanged"); - the first room of Doublez-Down's section has a HOM reflected on the floor, very visible (somewhat less so now than with previous builds) when you step out of the crate with the DP. He already gave his blessing to change the floor to non-reflecting if necessary, but I'm sure I can get rid of this HOM without resorting to that;- the sky is already beautiful, but the stars don't go all the way down to the horizon/mountains. Moreover, I can (slightly) see the edges where two of the backdrop planes meet - unless my gaze is perpendicular to said planes. This is a problem common to a lot of skyboxes which didn't exist when I used D3D (using EXUOpenGL now), and yet I know it can disappear (because equally, a lot of skyboxes don't have this problem). When I'm on holiday, I will try different ways of improving these things: make the horizon planes be one plane per side, and maybe make the 360° horizon render on a cylinder (number, length of sides to be determined) rather than on the 4 sides of a box, and as for the stars, I may look at a way of making a "dome" (or half a sphere) so that their distribution becomes isotropic.

Regarding this:

Mister_Prophet wrote:As for the message box, I had no problems with the messages I just noticed the text overlapped and didn't know if you guys discussed importing the bigger (ONP) trans window for UT. I'm of the mind that maybe all the messages could be shortened to fit the default trans window. I can help with this if I have permission to mend the logs in previous sections.

A bigger translator display would be welcome, but I don't know how to do that. It's trivial enough for quite a few people here, so if we go down this road, I'll just say we need a file that can be used with both UT and Unreal. At the moment, only UB's first trans log "jumps" the window.

UBerserker wrote:Prophet, on what difficulty you played the map on? (and on what platform?)Not sure why the boss is getting stuck in the corners, perhaps it's due to the extensive pathnoding?

The enemies in my section, by the way, have generally modified properties: higher ROF, more aggressive, etc... The Minigun runs out really fast if you plan to use it against the enemy group after you cross the green portal. Also yeah, decrease the Pupae's health.

UBerserker wrote:Teleport points should be fine, they're placed over the middle of the iron floor borders (not over the glass floor), when I play on Unreal difficulty she always jumps out of them and starts shooting at me. Perhaps I could never notice this bug because on Unreal difficulty you have to deal with a lot of Pupae (80 of them) and the Queen becomes a secondary problem.

Her Aggressiveness is unchanged but I decreased her CombatStyle of 0.2 points so she would decide more commonly to shoot you instead of chasing you for a melee - which makes the fight fairer as it's a bad idea having waves of Pupae surrounding you and an overly aggressive Queen.

Perhaps having an Easy/Medium only Queen with regular CombatStyle would be better? Pupae aren't in those difficulties.

I don't play test as much as you guys, but I've fought the Queen in this map at least 4 times on the Medium difficulty setting and she never ever got stuck. I think her properties don't need to be changed from what they are now: she almost killed me the first time and that's good! I think the minigun is great as it is, the map isn't done yet so we'll have plenty of more fighting to do with it.If you decrease the Pupae's health, then yes please make them faster - otherwise it's too easy!I'm not sold on the elevator going down to the Demon's Grave, either, but it works for now until we can get the initial concept to work properly.

UBerserker wrote:Oh and yeah I think that's ok if you take the green path.I have a plan with the red path which would "wrap" the map. Assuming other people will ever join, though.

Interesting... and don't worry, other people will join (and again, I certainly intend to add something again myself this summer)

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

Making some progress. Kinda using this run to add some more gameplay to follow UB's section and up the stakes, as well as lead the level back to the beginning so we have some open-endedness for backtracking. I also have a great idea for the level in terms of why these areas are important to visit, the point of it all, and how we can open doors for further sessions. I think the real problem we have right now is that nobody is really quite sure how to take the torch from the next person, so if I can manage it by Friday we may have a better fix on this.

EDIT: I also want another crack at the Demon's Grave lift and making it a two way path. We must think of COOP, yes?

Mister_Prophet wrote:Making some progress. Kinda using this run to add some more gameplay to follow UB's section and up the stakes, as well as lead the level back to the beginning so we have some open-endedness for backtracking. I also have a great idea for the level in terms of why these areas are important to visit, the point of it all, and how we can open doors for further sessions. I think the real problem we have right now is that nobody is really quite sure how to take the torch from the next person, so if I can manage it by Friday we may have a better fix on this.

EDIT: I also want another crack at the Demon's Grave lift and making it a two way path. We must think of COOP, yes?

Excellent news, Mister_Prophet!! I look forward to hearing more about this idea for the meaning behind the level's layout and all.I guess COOP wasn't something I was particularly bothered with when starting this (gotta admit I don't play COOP myself, not yet at least), but yes, if we can have it be COOP compatible I think that will make even more people happy. So yeah, if you can make it a two way path for the Demon's Grave, so much the better and thanks for pointing that out!

EDIT: if somehow the original idea of a plunge with the "cobwebs" slowing the player down just before impact can be made to work properly, then there will be no need for a two way path (I suppose).

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.